Wednesday, June 27, 2012

...and so...

...the 48th year begins.

As anniversary "celebrations" go, it was fairly low key,
but we had a nice day. We started with breakfast at Caffe Italia. We had
looked at our schedule for this week and realized that it would be difficult to go out to
dinner, and breakfast is always kind of fun, especially when Caffe Italia has crab eggs
benedict back on its menu!

I swear that restaurant has the. best. hollandaise sauce. ever.
You can actually taste the lemon, which doesn't always happen when I order any kind
of eggs benedict.

We had a nice text message from Jeri saying she was giving blood in
honor of our anniversary (I suspect she would have done it anyway, but it was nice of her
to put it that way).

Walt went off to work for the afternoon. I tried to get a nap,
since I had been up until 2 a.m. the night before, but I wasn't able to sleep.
Instead, I went shopping for groceries. I expected to buy "just a few
things" but came home with five bags, having spent nearly $200. And all I went
to buy was cottage cheese for the dogs!

I came home and made something I never make: dessert.
There was a recipe for a blueberry bread pudding at the supermarket that sounded
very good, so I put that together. Again, tried to nap, unsuccessfully. I
always try to nap on show days because, being an old person, even the most lively of shows
can put me to sleep.

I don't know what happened this weekend. It may have been my
"sprint" (most of you would call it a "stroll") up Twin Peaks to take
that photo of the pink triangle being dismantled at the end of Gay Pride day. But I
got up yesterday with two very sore knees. They felt like they were 120 years old.
The knee I hurt in my bike accident in 2003 always has some degree of pain in it,
but most of the pain was in the other knee, so every step I took sent shooting
pains into one or the other, or both, of my knees. As I walk around it starts to
feel better, but as soon as I sit and try to get up again, there is lots of pain.

Tonight I started using a cane as I walked around the house and, to
my relief, it really does help. I'm just hoping that whatever is wrong will be much
better by the time we leave for Prague. I'm sure it will, since it's already
starting to feel better.

The plan was to go to review Grease tonight. It is the
opening show of this season's Music Circus, Sacramento's summer season of musicals.
For what may be the first time in 12 years, we got there late. I may have been late
one other show in the past 12 years, but this was the first BIG show that I have been late
for. Last season they changed the Music Circus start time to 7:30 and I'd just
forgotten. We got there a little after 7:30 for what we thought was the usual 8 p.m.
curtain and had to stand outside, watching on TV for about 10 minutes, until there was a
suitable break where they could let us in (we were not alone--there were lots of people
who were late)

I became the patron that I detest. Arriving late, and
disrupting an ENTIRE ROW of people trying to watch the show. Our seats were exactly
in the middle of the row. There are 30 seats in the row and we were #18 and #19,
which meant that 14 people had to get up to let us pass, while there was action going on
stage. What's more, I couldn't really apologize to people I was stepping on and over
because there was a show going on on stage at the same time.

As for the show...well...I have a hard time with Grease.
Everybody knows it. Everybody loves it. It has great dancing, memorable
songs that you've sung for years but one should not loook too closely at the plot.
I hate that the message of the show is that a nice young girl, who is a virgin, who
doesn't smoke, and doesn't drink and who wears subdued clothing can be an outcast and that
the only way she is going to be part of the "in" crowd is to become a slut.
And when the transformation takes place, the audience cheers, the guy isn't afraid
to show the world that he loves her, and everybody goes off singing a lively tune.

Many of our popular musicals shouldn't be examined too closely (the
beloved Oklahoma, for example, celebrates the death of a guy nobody liked, who
was just a lonely loner who looked scary), but Grease is the one that is the most
difficult for me to watch and I always feel guilty for enjoying it.

And yes, even in the lively Grease, in the middle of all
that singing and dancing and noise, Walt had to keep poking me because I kept nodding off,
and was too sleepy when we got home to finish this journal entry.

We drove home listening to Says You and ending what was, as
I said, a low key anniversary, but just right for us.